1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a control method of an information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in viewpoint of environmental protection, power consumption of an electronic device is required to be low. In order to realize the low power consumption, an information processing apparatus uses a method for stopping the supply of electrical power to modules in a device such as storage unit when possible and shifting a mode thereof to a power saving mode.
If only suppression of power consumption to the lower level is considered, power may be frequently supplied to the modules as needed. However, as the number of times the device is turned ON and becomes larger, the possibility of the storage unit failure rises up. Therefore, if the storage unit is frequently turned ON and OFF, the storage unit may be failed before the product's life of the information processing apparatus having the storage unit ends. Accordingly, it is highly possible that the information processing apparatus becomes unavailable before the end of the product's life. The number of times the storage unit is turned ON and OFF refers to a number of times the power supply to the storage unit is increased or reduced without troubles, which the storage unit assures. Further, the product's life of the information processing apparatus means the operation time of the information processing apparatus without troubles, which the information processing apparatus assures.
In order to lessen such adverse operations, a standby time is set in advance and the power supply to the storage unit is stopped, after a job involving the start of the storage unit is finished and the standby time passes.
In general, the standby time of the storage unit is calculated from the product's life of the information processing apparatus and the number of ON/OFF times assured by the storage unit. As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-186426, a standby time is obtained by dividing the product's life of the information processing apparatus by the number of ON/OFF times assured by the storage unit. Further, the information processing apparatus performs control to prevent the stop of the power supply to the storage unit until the elapse of the standby time.
However, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-186426, while it is possible to prevent the number of times the storage unit is turned ON/OFF from exceeding a predetermined number of times before the product's life of the information processing apparatus ends, it becomes difficult to stop the power supply to the storage unit.
A technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-295144 solves the above problem. According to No. 2009-295144, when the job is finished, if an elapse time (time elapsed after an apparatus is turned ON) is larger than a reference time (the product's life divided by ON/OFF times secured by the storage unit), the HDD is turned OFF.
However, since Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-295144 employs the above configuration, the HDD cannot be turned OFF immediately when the job is finished, for awhile after the apparatus is turned ON.